Facebook ‘ digital gangsters’ who spread fake news: British MPs

London, Feb. 18: A scathing British parliamentary report on Monday branded Facebook ‘ digital gangsters’ who failed to fight the spread of fake news and violated data privacy.

Lawmakers' 18- month investigation into technology companies and disinformation also accused the world's largest social media platform of trying to hide the extent of Russian interference in foreign elections.

Facebook is coming under attack over its response to Russia's alleged use of misleading stories and targeted ads to sway the 2016 US presidential election and a series of European votes.

Its executives have further been accused of trying to either hide or suppress emerging evidence of foreign meddling flagged by its engineers.

Parliamentary committee chair Damian Collins

said Facebook “deliberately sought to frustrate our work by giving incomplete, disingenuous and at times misleading answers to our questions”.

Facebook co- founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg turned down three requests to appear before the committee.

“Companies like

Facebook should not be allowed to behave like ' digital gangsters' in the online world, considering themselves to be ahead of and beyond the law,” the 108- page report said.

The committee urged a compulsory code of ethics for all tech companies that would be overseen by an independent

UK regulator.

It said Facebook should be obliged to take down “sources of harmful content”. “We further recommend that the Government launches an independent investigation into past elections -including the UK election of 2017, the UK Referendum of 2016, and the Scottish Referendum of 2014 -- to explore what actually happened with regard to foreign influence,” the report said.

Russia has denied either backing Britain's decision to leave the European Union or covertly backing pro- Brexit leaders during the 2016 referendum campaign.

Facebook spokesman Karim Palant said executives at the California company “share the committee's concerns about false news and election integrity.”” We are open to meaningful regulation and support the committee's recommendation for electoral law reform,” Palant said in a statement released to AFP.

But Collins said Facebook has only adopted incremental policy changes that were mostly aimed at fending off regulation making it liable for the spread of malicious stories.